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Category: Miscellaneous

The Wetland Wiki, with almost 200 articles was successful for a few years, but writing constant wiki style articles and combating incessant spam was tiring. Combining this with the improving coverage on wetands at Wikipedia, made it time to close the Wiki. Short sightedly, I closed the wiki rather than than maintaining it, leaving me with an dated, unsupported version of Mediawiki, with some good articles residing in the database. Mediawiki offers a bunch of export options, but all I had was the MySQL datbase. What to do? Goto Stackoverflow of course! I Found the following snippet of code to run in phpmyadmin, which extracts the last revision of the page text and title, which can be easily exported to a csv file. The csv still retains the wiki styling, but with a little effort, all page data can be retrieved. The Sql is as follows:

SELECT page_title, page_touched, old_text
FROM revision,page,text
WHERE revision.rev_id=page.page_latest
AND text.old_id=revision.rev_text_id;

The Wetland Wiki was published under the Creative Commons, and the csv file of all of the articles in a semi readable format is is available here: Wetland Wiki extract

MediaWiki export
MediaWiki export

 

 

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Category: Legal

Occasionally updated, but still a great resource, is the Connecticut Wetlands Law Blog written by attorney Janet Brooks, who beside specializing in Environmental Law, managed the wetlands program at the Connecticut Attorney General's office between 1990 to 2006.

In September 2013 she did a comprehensive review of 95% of Connecticut's towns ,comparing the definitions of regulated activities, upland review areas, vernal pools and vegetated buffers. She has also has contributed a considerable number of articles about wetlands published in "The Habitat", the Newsletter of the Connecticut Association of Conservation and Inland Wetland Commissions (CACIWC). The articles are available to read on her website here

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Category: Law & Policy

The duck stamp, a brilliant Depression era idea, is a work of art, tax and wetland conservation tool rolled into one. Selling for $25, an amazing 98% of the proceeds from selling the duck stamps are used to fund conservation purchases and easements nationwide. The beautiful art on the stamp is the result of a very competitive competition, and is limited to depicting a migratory bird. Beyond funding conservation, the purchase of the stamp allowes the holder to hunt migratory birds on Federal lands during the open season.

Despite its successes, the program has not been raising as much money as it had in the past. Driving the change are demographics, over the past 50 years, the hunting population has both shrunk and grown older.

In an attempt to address this shortfall, and appeal to a larger pool of of nature lovers, including birders and others not likely to pick up and go bird hunting, it has been proposed that a bird other than a migratory bird be placed aside the traditional waterfowl on the duck stamp.

Due to both it effectiveness and popularity, changes to the duck stamp program are not taken lightly, even if design changes expected to expand its appeal to both hunters and birders are made. I’m of the mind if the duck stamp isn't raising as much money as it had in the past, why not commission a 2nd stamp, solely for raising conservation funds without the waterfowl or even bird requirement?

Duck stamps are works of art in their own right with a rich history, I don't think either hunters or birders would get their feathers ruffled if the duck stamp remains true to its heritage.

More info on the duck stamp program here

 

Wetlands in the News

18 May 2024